Extract from a buffer

I am using Node.js and downloading .doc files using superagent. This gives me a buffer object that I would like to parse and extract text from. However, word-extractor only seems to support files.

How do I extract the text from a .doc in memory, not in a file?

[morungos]

That’s mainly an issue of the underlying OLE implementation, which is very much wired to use files. All the logic that depends on fs is local to OleCompoundDoc, so one solution would be to build an alternative implementation of that classes that is backed by a buffer rather than a file. Or, perhaps better, to refactor the file system access to a separate set of methods that could be overridden more easily.

It’s a nice and important addition. If I can get the time for this, I will.

[olsonpm]

I implemented buffer support at gmr-fms/node-word-extractor if you guys are willing to switch to the npm package @gmr-fms/word-extractor. I didn’t want to work with coffeescript hence the js source and slightly modified api.

const fs = require('fs')
const extract = require('@gmr-fms/word-extractor')

const buf = fs.readFileSync('path/to/file.doc')

extract.fromBuffer(buf).then(doc => {
  // do stuff with doc here
})

I really appreciate this library though, the code was very clean and easy to follow.